The fifth chapter has been rewritten! :D
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(Graceful Rest — Void Woven — Nursery — Godseeker's Baffling — Sudden Call)
~~~ are used for changing the perception of vision (POV)
••• denotes flashback
*** denotes time skip
** denotes background sounds
'' denotes internal thought
… denotes silence
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~~~
Mine eyes do uncloud themselves.
The way things long buried beneath dark water rise unto the surface reluctantly in pieces and dragging with them the cold of the depths they have inhabited. Thought returned not all at once but in scattered fragments and each fragment brought behind it a measure of pain the way hooks bring flesh when drawn from deep places and tearing what they touch without particular malice and without particular care. The chamber ceiling swam above me in pale gold and fractured candlelight whilst I lay unmoving and considered whether waking up itself had perhaps been devised as a punishment suited specifically to my situation and by whom and whether there existed any recourse.
There did not.
Mine limbs ached grievously yet the agony had withdrawn somewhat from its former savagery and settled now into a dull persistent throb lodged deep within bone and marrow both like the sort of pain that doth not rage but endured and by enduring declared its intention of remaining indefinitely. My breathing came troubled yet steadier than before and the violent convulsions which had seized me in the cathedral had ceased their rebellion at last though whether from resolution or exhaustion I could not say and did not investigate too closely but then I became aware of the looseness about my body.
My robes. My bindings.
My hands moved with sudden alarm and found the cords at my waist undone and the wrappings about mine arms eased partly free. Upon the nearby desk lay my ceremonial and maternal mask beside folded cloths stained black from the Void that had poured from me in the cathedral and would not entirely stop pouring for some time thereafter. For some moments I stared and then outrage rose within me swift and clean as blood from a deep cut.
How DARE they.
Do they not know? Have the younger Seekers learned nothing from the years of doctrine and instruction and patient correction of exactly this species of transgression? Hath all that teaching become so diluted by comfort and repetition that they now lay hands upon the Great Speaker as though I were some fevered common invalid coughing herself toward an unremarkable grave?
This flesh is CONSECRATED. Let that sink in.
This body hath been hollowed and remade and steeped for decades in rites that would have unmade lesser vessels entirely as the rites that consumed not merely the willing participant but everything they had been beforehand and left in its place something more useful and considerably less comfortable. These bones have borne the pressure of communion and these veins have carried traces of His own Essence as a cold flooding presence that altered the channels it moved through and doth not restore them to their original condition after passing.
There are chambers within my body no longer wholly mine and there exist moments during prayer wherein I cannot with confidence distinguish where my own breath ended and His dark beginneth. And they touched me. Undressed me and handled me with medicinal practicality as though I were a problem requiring solution rather than a person requiring reverence.
Fools.
Yet another thought followed close behind it and quieter. The memory of the tendril.
Nothing.
'Oh God above Gods.'
It truly felt like nothing like temperature could not categorise it and could die trying and the coldness that followed was not merely absence and winter's cruelty and not the cold of graves where the stone hath drawn the warmth from everything it touched over long centuries. Something vast and final and impossibly gentle in its finality that knew precisely what it handled and chose gentleness not from uncertainty but from decision which made the gentleness entirely different in character from any other gentleness I had been shown in all my years.
The sensation lingered still within my nerves as though His touch had altered the pathways beneath the flesh permanently and changed the channels through which sensation travelled and now every motion of my body sought unconsciously to recreate what could not be recreated by mortal means or mortal hands or any instrument of this realm or the next—
I cannot get enough of it.
The admission came suddenly and silently with terrible honesty and I shut mine eyes at once as though closing them might conceal the thought from whatever portion of Him still lingered within me like cold metal lingers in the palm after the blade hath been set down. Shame warred with longing inside my breast and neither gained clear victory and I let them war for a moment before commanding both to silence and receiving only partial compliance.
I had known ecstasy before in lesser forms and fleeting revelations granted during rites and vigils and the bone-deep exhaustion that followed prolonged worship wherein the boundary between the self and the sacred grows thin enough that light passed through it. And yet that single touch and moment wherein His tendril raised me from the floor as though I were at once pitiful and precious as though the distinction scarcely mattered against the fact of the lifting—
Had undone me.
…
No. Forget it. Forget it.
I shall remind myself that I shall correct the others later concerning the proper handling of sanctified persons during recovery and that there exist prescribed procedures for tending unto bodies dedicated wholly unto divine office and none of those procedures include stripping the Speaker into her underthings and piling blankets atop her like laundry awaiting inventory by someone with neither urgency nor aesthetic sensibility.
Slowly I pushed myself upright against the wall though weakness still gnawed at mine muscles and every motion brought fresh protest from my ribs whilst the chamber greeted me in silence old and familiar.
The Nursery.
How long since I had truly looked at it? Once this place rang with voices and instruction and weary laughter spoken by pilgrims too exhausted to maintain the full architecture of solemnity and once the wounded came hither after rites and visions and the punishments that devotion occasionally required of the body and here they recovered themselves beneath soft lamplight whilst elder Seekers whispered prayers over their sleeping forms. The prayers were not always necessary but they were always sincere and sincerity hath its own weight regardless of whether the recipient is awake to receive it.
Though that was before the Lord ascended unto us in fullness and before we remade ourselves in the image of what His return demanded and before we learned what true worship required when the worshipped was not merely symbol but presence. And yet the chamber itself remained stubbornly untouched by the transformations which had overtaken the greater realm with its walls gleamed still with that old pale gold softened by age into something almost mournful and that quality possessed by beautiful things which have outlasted the context that made them meaningful. Leaves and flowering patterns curled along the carved surfaces as delicate as scripture illuminated by hands long turned unto dust and the hands of artisans who believed beauty itself a form of worship.
Perhaps once it was and now beauty served chiefly as memory and memory is oftentimes merely another species of wound that hath learned to keep still and quiet and pass itself off as something more decorative. The bed beneath me yielded softly as I shifted and I nearly sighed despite myself. Dear heavens. Even now it remained absurdly comfortable. Some craftsman among us had devoted wholly unreasonable effort toward ensuring that invalids might rest here better than monarchs rested elsewhere which was either great generosity or a peculiarly specific form of vanity. I did not begrudge him for it and my ribs thanked him without reservation.
Above hung the great chandelier with its fractured crystals scattering broken light across the chamber walls in pale trembling patterns that danced endlessly and illuminated nothing true. Such is the nature of reflected things as they move without purpose and brighten without warming and they give the appearance of light doing what light ought to do without any of the substance of it.
At the room's center stood the aspersorium though empty it was it once held sacred oils and waters drawn from forgotten gods and rested there awaiting blessing rites and pilgrims wept merely to touch the basin's rim and the weeping was not performance but the body's honest response to proximity to something it recognized as larger than itself. Now the basin stood barren beneath gathering dust with its stone rim darkened where the oils had sat for decades and then ceased sitting and where the hands had reached and then ceased reaching as do all vessels eventually.
My gaze drifted over the chamber and the years returned unto me unbidden as years are wont to do when one hath been recently reminded of one's mortality and the general indifference of the cosmos to one's plans. We changed this place. Hall by hall and stone by stone with considerable arguing and at least two structural collapses that I shall not discuss in detail and which were in any case handled swiftly and with a minimum of surviving testimony.
There exist no corners now within the greater dreaming realm untouched by the Lord's Ascension for the Void runs through these halls as blood runs through veins and with equal stubbornness when one wishes it elsewhere. We wove it into every surface and every crack and every threshold and invited it into our rites and our architecture and eventually into ourselves. That last part proved quite troublesome in ways I had not entirely anticipated and will not entirely admit to having failed to anticipate.
The Void obeyed no natural law save appetite which is not truly a law but a tendency raised to the level of theology by sheer consistency. At first the younger Seekers approached it as one might approach a venomous beast discovered unexpectedly within the larder with extreme caution and significant noise and a strong preference for someone else handling the matter. Their caution was not unreasonable as the Void consumed nearly everything offered unto it and attempted repeatedly to consume several things not offered including on one occasion the better part of a load-bearing wall which was noticed only when the ceiling above began expressing opinions about structural integrity.
One unfortunate acolyte lost half the colour from his left arm after mishandling an unsealed vessel and spent three days convinced the limb had died entirely despite the fact it continued functioning with complete reliability and was if anything rather more efficient than before in ways he declined to examine closely. Another fool and I use that word with the measured precision it deserves because she attempted stirring condensed Void with a ceremonial spoon. We never found the spoon nor entirely all of her.
I warned them repeatedly that panic only worsened matters though privately I possessed at that stage no clearer understanding of the substance's actual nature than they did. Yet leadership required confidence particularly when none is available naturally and in any sufficient quantity and thus I observed the chaos for several days while projecting the serene certainty of someone who had anticipated every outcome and found them all within the scope of acceptable contingency and then at last clarity came unto me.
Treat it not as beast but as element.
Water flooded where paths permit it passage and fire consumed what fed it and spares what doth not yet the Void differed from these chiefly in scale and temperament and the speed with which it expressed dissatisfaction with its containment. The realization struck me whilst watching two Seekers struggle unsuccessfully to force the substance into sealed sanctified pots before the Void had devoured the paint from the exterior of both vessels and was methodically gnawing the metal rims besides with the patient thoroughness of something that hath nowhere pressing to be and intended to exploit that advantage fully.
One particularly ambitious mass had attempted swallowing an entire container whole and succeeded halfway before becoming lodged stubbornly within the corridor doorway and refusing all encouragements toward relocation including several that were not strictly canonical in their methodology. The screaming lasted hours yet therein lay instruction as it often doth in situations that produce sustained screaming.
If the Void hungered naturally then hunger itself might serve to guide it and thus I suggested we use the sanctified vessels not as prisons but as bait with prepared channels laid ahead of it and with pathways carved through stone and floor alike lined with sacred markings to invite the substance's passage rather than resist it. The younger Seekers stared at me with that expression they wore when uncertain whether I spoke brilliance or madness which hath been and I will acknowledge the expression most commonly directed toward me during moments of genuine inspiration as though the two have always been nearer neighbours than people find comfortable.
Yet it worked. God forgive me, it worked beautifully.
The Void followed the prepared channels greedily and spread through the halls with the same natural enthusiasm it had previously directed toward our structural integrity by flowing outward until entire chambers blackened beneath the Lord's Essence and the air changed throughout the realm whilst carrying that cold ancient scent of endless dark even into the deepest sleep. We transformed everything in the image of His service and I mean everything but save this chamber. The Nursery. It alone remained untouched and untouched by design.
Why?
I have asked myself this often in quiet moments and produced several different answers depending on the state of mind in which the question arose. Perhaps we wished to preserve remembrance or perhaps some form of shame required a location or perhaps some fragment within us feared surrendering wholly the last evidence that once we were merely people and not this strange half-devoured congregation kneeling forever at the edge of God though I have examined this least willingly. I did not know then and I am not certain I know now. My fingers tightened unconsciously within the bedsheets. These linens had passed through generations of Speakers and caretakers and holy attendants woven carefully and preserved reverently and brought forward through years with the particular care reserved for things that represent something larger than their material.
Now grasped by failure and wrinkled in the hands of a woman who could not stand before her God.
The thought struck fresh every time I allowed it near the way a wound re-opens not because the body hath not tried to heal it but because the trying is itself insufficient against the frequency of the insult. Perfection demanded entirety and nothing withheld and no weakness visible and hesitation in the moment that mattered most. Every rung upon the ascent must bear weight flawless and unquestioning and especially the final rung and especially in the presence of the being for whose sake the ascent was undertaken.
I had stumbled there. There of all places. After EVERYTHING.
What would the elder Speakers say? Could they behold me? What judgment would they render upon a woman who spent decades in preparation for a single moment and then could not stand upright within it? Would they see through all the ceremony and all the authority and all the composed surfaces I had constructed with such patient labor over so many years and unto the frightened grasping thing beneath that wanted and reached and had always wanted more than it could hold and called the wanting devotion because devotion was a word with more dignity?
I pray. Let it not be so.
My breathing roughened again and I set about smoothing it by force of will which is less dignified than it sounds but more effective than most alternatives. I sought perfection and an offering so absolute the Lord Himself could not but acknowledge it and not look past it or through it or away from it unto something more worthy of His regard. I knew already He was displeased. With us perhaps and with me certainly with the ragged edges of the ceremony and the inadequacy of the vessel and the particular humiliation of watching the vessel attempt to correct its own inadequacy by dragging itself across the floor. But when at last He came and His gaze turned upon us—
I could not stand.
The memory pierced me new as the first time. Their hands upon me. Supporting me. Holding me upright before Him as one holds a structure that hath begun to lean as though necessary and kind and yet unspeakably diminishing by witnessing mine weakness and witnessing mine humiliation and thus the moment ceased belonging wholly unto me. The bitterness rose sudden and poisonous in my throat whilst mine teeth clenched painfully and my breath quickened into the sheets below.
Did I not earn that moment? The question burned clean through sentiment and scripture alike. Did I not suffer for it? Did I not offer all that I am and several things I had not strictly verified were mine to offer? DID I NOT—
"…Hazel?"
The voice entered softly and uncertainly from the chamber doorway and all at once the storm within me fell silent the way storms fall silent not from resolution but from the interruption of something external entering the weather system and changing its character entirely. I did not yet turn toward the door and only steadily breathed once and then twice and composed my face into the expression I had worn for decades in rooms where composure was the first requirement and the last refuge both.
I reached for my mask upon the desk and my hand caught the edge of it clumsily as though the motion had betrayed me before dignity could intervene and I very nearly pitched forward entirely which would have been a conclusion to the evening I refused to entertain but caught myself against the desk's surface and recovered what could be recovered and put the mask on and settled my hands into their proper arrangement as though none of the preceding three seconds had occurred at all.
"Y-yes?"
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